E3 2009: CrimeCraft Preview

CrimeCraft is an upcoming persistant world shooter looking to give the player a little crime and danger in their life. The basis of the game is a world set in the future when cities have been walled-in to decrease new dangers that have presented themselves due to ecological disasters and a full-on crash of the world economy. However, this environment has allowed gangs to flourish. You play as an inhabitant of this world and try to make you way into one of the local gangs for money, protection and a grand ol' time.

There are three common areas that you can play in that can hold over 500 players per area. Within these areas are "cribs" which are the gang homebase - much like what a guild hall would be in a fantasy MMO. The economy of the game will be very player-driven with crafting an important part of the game. Players will be able to create and customize clothing, weapons, weapon attachments and boosts (aka drugs). Boosts will have both positive and negative changes to your character and are short-term; much like buffs in other games.

Vendors within the cities will be able to sell components to manufacture player-made goods but enemies in PvE will also drop crafting components. The best items in the game will be player-made and one of the interesting concepts is that certains players can be known for making the best items. Each gang is able to choose a crafting specialization, giving them bonuses to creating those items. This also allows for players to create trading deals between gangs.

As for customization, the developers have focused on allowing for a great deal of clothing customization instead of the actual look of the character. There will be basic selections for how your character looks, but the emphasis is very much on the clothes that you wear. In fact, this is so much the case that a marketing deal has been made to feature Mark Ecko clothing within the game. While most items are crafted, you can also find items on enemies. Something great about the level of player control is that you are still able to change how found clothing looks by bringing it to a tailor to modify. The example given is if you are a member of the Yellow Hat gang and find a sweet purple hat with great stats but can't wear it as it will diss your gang; you can simply bring it to a tailor and change the colour to fit in with your crew.

There will be two forms of "quests" in CrimeCraft -- missions and jobs. Both can be aquired from payphones in cities but missions can also be picked up from NPCs. Rewards are also obtained and are often "bonded" to your character so you cannot trade or sell those items. Skill is very important in this game as it is a shooter; which means a level 1 character could potentially do better than a level 5, for example. As you increase levels you gain access to more weapons and skills, enabling you to have more variety of ways of dealing damage during PvE or PvP. Levels go up to 50 and new things will be opened as you progress through the game. No combat occurs within city limits so when you are ready to venture out, you can talk to a guard or select the gun icon from your menu.

In terms of PvE, you can select three difficulty levels; easy, normal or hard. Easy enables the player to quickly gather crafting materials since it will be easier to kill enemies, but playing on hard will reward the player with better items. PvE can come in different modes including base defense and stock pile. In base defense, you must defend a certain point from masses coming to onslaught it and stock pile involves running around and collecting items from enemies. PvP has several different types of gameplay which are unique to CrimeCraft. The first is Robbery in which each side has a safe full of money. The objective of the game is to reach the other team's safe and stand near it for as long as possible to collect as much money as you can and then return it to your safe. If you do die, you will drop the money which can be picked up by other players. There is also capture the flag, a free-for-all, team death match and capture point, which would be familiar to any Team Fortress 2 players out there.

Bank and mail systems are also in place with ATMs around the city acting as a bank where you can store items. The mail system is similiar to other games with the options of adding more than one item per mail and also a CoD system which is great due to the nature of player crafting in the game.

External to the game will be a social profile website attached to CrimeCraft. The site will feature a player profile, gang websites which can include rosters and a shout box to call out rival gangs. Tournies will also be organized through the game to compete against rival gangs for prestige and prizes. Microtransactions will also exist in CrimeCraft but these will be purely cosmetic in anture.

CrimeCraft is definitely a game for those that love crafting as well as shooters. It will be available August 25th with two months of gameplay free with purchase of the game. There will be a monthly fee but we were told it will definitely be cheaper than other MMOs out there right now. It's most certainly a new twist on MMOs and any game with a lot of character item customization and crafting coupled with great PvE and PvP has a lot of promise to be a great addition to the MMO world.

Like what you see? Follow us on Twitter @GamingExcel, or find us
on Facebook for all the latest updates. Agree or disagree? Have
something you'd like to add? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

About the Author

While Kristine Greaves may be new to reviewing, she's definitely not new to gaming. Starting with an Atari at the tender age of three, Kristine has been an avid gamer her whole life. With a lack of consoles plaguing her home, she has upped her PC gaming and enjoys MMOs and shocking other gamers with her lack of a Y chromosome.